Kalahari National Park

The Kalahari Desert is a part of the largest continuous area of sand in the world. Its sand plains cover nine African countries: Gabon, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo (in the north), Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe (in the centre), Botswana, Namibia and South Africa (in the south). The area covers approximately 2,5 million square kilometres and the sand is sometimes well over 100 metres deep.

Today, the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park forms Africa's first transfrontier park with the Gemsbok National Park in Botswana, facilitating the seasonal migration of wildlife in search of water, and the movement of free-roaming predators. The new 38000 km2 park, known as Kgalagadi ('land of thirst'), represents an increasingly rare phenomenon in the world: a vast ecosystem relatively free of human influence.

The term Kalahari was derived from the Kgalagadi word for 'the land which dried up', 'the dry land' or 'the thirstland' .